Student absences increased under threat of deportation efforts, Stanford study finds
Amid a recent surge of federal immigration enforcement activity, educators across the country are reporting growing concerns that immigrant families fearing deportation have started keeping their kids home from school.
New Stanford research substantiates their suspicions, showing a sharp increase in student absences starting in January at schools in California’s Central Valley, a region with a high population of Latin American immigrants.
Analyzing three years of daily attendance data from five school districts in the Central Valley, the study found on average a 22% increase in student absences in January and February 2025, compared with the same months in previous years.
Considerable jumps were seen in all age groups but particularly for younger students, with the increase among K-5 students more than triple the effect among high schoolers.
“The findings indicate lost learning opportunities, but this isn’t just about kids missing out on instructional time,” said Thomas S. Dee, the Barnett Family Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who conducted the study with support from Big Local News, a project of the Stanford Computational Journalism Lab. “The stress that’s being put on these young children and their families is serious, and the increased absences are a leading indicator of broader developmental harm.”
The study, released as a working paper on June 16, evaluated absences day by day in each of the districts during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, as well as the current 2024-25 school year through the end of February. With a daily time series of data over the three years, Dee could observe seasonal patterns typically associated with student absences, such as the days before major school breaks or community holidays like Day of the Dead.
“That allowed us to credibly answer the question of whether the patterns from this school year differ significantly from prior years,” said Dee, who is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and faculty director of the GSE’s John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities.
GSE Professor Thomas Dee
In the months prior to the intensification of immigration enforcement in the Central Valley that began on Jan. 7, absence data for the current school year was indistinguishable from previous years.
“But in January, we saw a sharp and unusual increase in absences that was coincident with the raids,” said Dee. “And the fact that the increase was similarly high in February indicates that these effects were not transitory.”
The effects were grouped into four different grade spans: pre-kindergarten, grades K-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12. The impact was significant at all levels, with an approximate increase of 30% in pre-K, 27% in grades K-5, 17% for middle school, and 8% among high schoolers.
The study cites two factors likely contributing to the higher rates among the youngest students: first, that children living with undocumented immigrants are more concentrated at younger ages; and second, that undocumented individuals might be especially concerned about being separated by an immigration raid when the family includes young children.
Beyond learning loss
More than 5 million children under age 18 live with a parent who is an unauthorized immigrant in the United States, and the vast majority of these children are U.S. citizens, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center report.
Dee pointed to past research that has documented the effects of immigration enforcement activity on children’s academic achievement as well as emotional well-being, including increased levels of anxiety and depression.
In addition to educational and developmental harms to the affected students, the increased absences can impose negative impacts on schools more broadly, Dee noted. Teachers may need to backtrack instruction to help students who missed earlier lessons, slowing the pace of learning overall. Meanwhile, increased absenteeism could deepen the challenges facing school districts that were already confronting the financial implications of enrollment losses from the pandemic.
For educators, the findings suggest strategies to address or offset potential harm, such as offering virtual instruction or adopting trauma-informed teaching practices to support affected students.
“Teachers can be more effective when they’re aware of what’s going on in their students’ lives, and when they better understand the learning challenges and barriers students are bringing with them into the classroom,” said Dee.
Faculty mentioned in this article: Thomas S. Dee
